A historian or anthropologist spends years working on a monograph, bulking up an argument. A scholarly publisher takes more years to shepherd that argument into print. Meanwhile, academic libraries have ever-smaller amounts of money and space to lavish on such books, which often have more pages than they have readers.

What if scholars, publishers, and tenure-and-promotion committees embraced short-form e-books as a respectable way to deliver serious scholarship? A Kindle Singles model could help academics and publishers pick up the pace of production. It could be priced low enough to appeal to library budgets. It wouldn't devour precious shelf space. It would suit libraries' current desire to build up their e-book collections. And it might pull in new readers for serious scholarship. Read more...